géographe de cabinet

17:52 Dec 17, 2014 

I like what you've done, but still feel 'armchair' jars. Going to try: "since cartographers could usually produce general maps without ever leaving their offices".

17:34 Dec 17, 2014 

It doesn't matter that desktop and armchair are modern. You don't need to find an 18th-century-sounding term - just take out the quotation marks and say "maps were often produced by armchair cartographers", perhaps adding something like "who had never visited the locations concerned."

16:01 Dec 17, 2014 

Thanks all. This text makes reference to a term used at the time (18th C), and I feel both desktop and armchair are a little modern. I'm wondering about:

'First, the difficulty of travelling in the 18th century, since general maps were often produced by people known as “office” cartographers (who produced maps without setting foot on the land themselves), and were sometimes used by the public as a substitution for travel.

13:52 Dec 17, 2014 

I wonder whether cartographer isn't the appropriate expression in English. (See the comment about Bellin):
https://books.google.de/books?id=75bpxYE_-coC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA...